Barriers to the Development of Marital Health as a Health Field*

The development of Marital Health as a bona fide health field is posited as the most viable means for obtaining funding for training, research and treatment concerning the marital dyad equal to such funding now available for other health fields. Obstacles to this development include (1) the failure to differentiate between the concepts of “healthy marriages” and “marital health as a health field,” (2) the erroneous assumption that marital health already exists as a health field, (3) the preindustrial myth of naturalism, and (4) criticisms of the health model that are based on the search for value-free models and terminology.